AlterNet.org: Leah Nelsonhttps://www.alternet.org/authors/leah-nelson
enPro-Capitalist, Anti-Government Extremists https://www.alternet.org/pro-capitalist-anti-government-extremists
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">A new breed of investment consultant mixes dubious financial advice with anti-government propaganda.</div></div></div><!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>Back in 1978, when the world was young and “Saturday Night Live” was only in its third season, a young comedian named Steve Martin took to the stage and told his audience how to become millionaires and never pay taxes.</p><p>“First … get a million dollars,” he <a href="http://snltranscripts.jt.org/77/77imono.phtml">said</a>. “What do [you] say to the tax man when he comes to [your] door and says, ‘You have never paid taxes?’ Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: ‘I forgot!’”</p><p>Porter Stansberry, an “investment advisor” with a knack for lining his own pockets, used a slightly different strategy in 2003. When the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) came to his door and accused him of making over a million dollars selling false “inside tips,” the self-aggrandizing financial guru claimed that it was his First Amendment right to tell his subscribers whatever he wanted — even if what he wanted to tell them was, <a href="http://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/comp18090.htm">as the SEC put it</a>, “baseless speculation and outright lies.”</p><p>The courts disagreed. In 2009, after years of very public litigation, a federal appeals panel upheld the SEC’s charges and <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2010/03/09/worldnetdailys-financial-columnist-faces-15-mil/161414">fined</a> Stansberry $1.5 million.</p><p>Stansberry — who had enjoyed some respect in financial circles and whose First Amendment argument (though not his conduct) was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/opinion/04sun3.html">endorsed</a> by respected news outlets who feared the case would set a precedent for punishing the press for publishing incorrect financial analysis — did not take the verdict well.</p><p>He did not stop peddling advice — but these days, it’s about more than get-rich-quick schemes. Evidently soured on the government by his brush with the law, Stansberry has turned from scam artist to antigovernment radical, using various Internet publications to mix dubious investment advice with apocalyptic warnings about a coming era of tyranny that will destroy America.</p><div data-toggle-group="story-13126957"><p>His most recent insight? According to a YouTube video distributed across a multitude of far-right websites and discussed with great seriousness by figures like antigovernment conspiracist <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/alex-jones">Alex Jones</a>, President Obama is planning to overthrown the Constitution, implement socialism, and seize a third term in office.</p><p>According to Stansberry, Obama won’t even have to use force to do it. Instead, the president plans to buy his third term with untold profits gained from mining America’s vast shale oil deposits, which will lead to an era of extraordinary prosperity unlike anything America has seen before.</p><p>“All of this new wealth,” Stansberry says, “will seem like a gift from the Prophet Muhammad to the administration of Barack Obama.”</p><p>And his supporters will eat it up. Once the black gold really starts flowing, Stansberry claims, the president will execute a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/opinion/why-chavez-was-re-elected.html?ref=hugochavez&amp;_r=0">Hugo Chavez-like</a> power grab, distributing money and favors to friends, cronies, and political allies, who in return will cheer for him in the streets as he seizes an unconstitutional third term — and, possibly, even a fourth — in office. During his reign of terror, Obama will replace America’s market economy with a socialist dictatorship and “punish and tax those who work hard,” using the wealth they create to “buy favors and luxuries for millions of Americans … who have done nothing to earn it.”</p><p>America, of course, will be ruined.</p><p>Stansberry is not the only ultra-libertarian to promote such ideas. One of his most prominent fellow travelers is Doug Casey, an antigovernment “investment guru” who on Nov. 29 told subscribers to his newsletter that being a taxpayer in America today is analogous to “being a Jew in Germany in the mid-1930’s.”</p><p>On the surface, Casey (who often cross-promotes Stansberry’s articles on his various websites and newsletters and who is described by Stansberry as a friend and mentor) seems a cheerful misanthrope, whose breezy manner and self-deprecating wit (he often says Uncle Scrooge McDuck is his hero) is a refreshing change from the pompous grandiosity of his close cousins in the far-right “Patriot” movement.</p><p>But scratch that surface and it’s clear that this self-described “anarcho-capitalist,” who in 2009 outlined a plan to privatize a small country and take it public on the New York Stock Exchange, is courting the same audience of government-fearing radicals. Though he puts a fresh face on tired conspiracies and a new spin on old animosities, Casey’s message is the same: The government is your enemy, and if you don’t prepare, it will destroy you.</p><p>If you stripped the Patriot movement of its pseudo-legal rhetoric, conspiracist malarkey and allusions to supposed Christian virtue, you’d end up with an ideology much like the one espoused by Stansberry, Casey and their compatriots. Often described as “anarcho-capitalists” or “voluntaryists,” their belief in essence is that government — any government — is by its very nature tyrannical and unnatural. They propose instead an essentially stateless society in which all relationships, economic and otherwise, are voluntary and untaxed. Services like roads and mail delivery would be built and maintained by private entities that would charge market-based fees for those who desired to use them. Government in any recognizable form simply would not exist.</p><p>In some respects, Casey and Stansberry’s rhetoric sounds like laissez-faire capitalism taken to its logical extreme. But Casey, Stansberry, and similar ideologues espouse beliefs that are even further out than that.</p><p>Mainstream conservatives often allege that the balance between states’ rights and federal power has tipped too far towards the latter, with the federal government exercising powers the framers of the Constitution never dreamed of. But Casey actually believes that the Constitution itself “was essentially a coup.”</p><p>Explaining this assertion in the same Nov. 29 newsletter in which he compared being an American taxpayer to being a Jew in Nazi Germany, Casey said: “[T]he delegates to what we now call the Constitutional Convention were not empowered to replace the existing government — only to improve upon the Articles of Confederation between the then-independent states. The framers of the Constitution drafted it with the notion of a national government already in place.”</p><p>They “calmed fears of loss of state sovereignty by calling the new government the ‘United States of America’ – a verbal sleight of hand that worked for over half a century. Then the southern states decided to exercise what these words imply, their right to leave the union … and the wrong side won.”</p><p>In other words, as Casey sees things, the Constitution and its built-in plan for a national government caused the Civil War.</p><p>“I’ve always suspected that U.S. and world history would be different – and better – if those delegates had done as they were told and just smoothed over the rough spots in the Articles rather than replaced them with the Constitution,” Casey explained in an April 2012 article. “Greater independence among the states could have led to more innovation, and I doubt there would have been the unpleasantness of 1861-’65. People with differing ethical values and economic interests would not have been forced to obey the same laws.”</p><p>Translation: Confederate partisans — people whose “ethical values and economic interests” included buying, selling, beating, raping and killing other human beings whose skin color happened to be different from their own — were unjustly stopped by overweening federal power that was built into the Constitution from Day One as part of a long-acting stealth coup to steal power from the states.</p><p>This is one place where Casey and portions of the Patriot crowd very definitely part ways.</p><p>Patriot ideologues tend to revere the Constitution — at least up to the 14th Amendment — as an almost divinely inspired document, and talk about the founding fathers as near-infallible prophets. In some ways, Casey’s pseudo-history of the United States is the political inverse of the one promoted by Christian pseudo-historian <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/david-barton">David Barton</a>, who contends that the American Revolution was fought to free slaves and that the founding fathers “already had the entire debate on creation and evolution” and chose creationism. Casey, who once described Santa Claus as “God on training wheels” and who jokes about saying grace to Crom, the fictional deity featured in Conan the Barbarian, would not likely get along well with Barton.</p><p>Yet in a Venn diagram of antigovernment extremists, Barton is one of the few who would fall clearly outside of the overlap between Casey- and Stansberry-style anarcho-capitalism and Patriot ideology.</p><p>The areas of overlap, particularly with the radical “sovereign citizens” movement, are significant – and not unknown to adherents of anarcho-capitalism, or “voluntaryism,” as it is called by some. Carl Watner, who has been publishing a newsletter called “The Voluntaryist” since 1982 and who appears to be the godfather of Casey and Stansberry’s hyper-antigovernment ideology, grapples with many of the same issues that sovereign citizens do.</p><p>In a 1994 article titled “Un-Licensed, Un-Numbered, Un-Taxed,” Watner wrote approvingly of what he called “conscientious objectors” (sovereign citizens, as readers of this blog would call them) “who prefer to remain individuals rather than embrace a statist system which licenses, numbers and taxes them in hundreds of ways.”</p><p>Watner’s essay focused on the “<a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2009/spring/return-of-the-sovereigns/incident-lis">Embassy of Heaven</a>,” an Oregon-based sovereign citizen group and church that sells fake passports and licenses for so-called “Ambassadors of Heaven.” As Watner explains it, members of the “Embassy” consider themselves to be residents of Heaven and subjects of Christ – and like ambassadors from anywhere, they reason, they are entitled to live within the United States without being subject to its jurisdiction.</p><p>Voluntaryists and sovereign citizens are not identical. One difference Watner identified between his approach and that of the Embassy of Heaven “is that the church relies upon the Christian religion as its bulwark in resisting the State.”</p><p>Not all sovereign citizens belong to an organization like the Embassy of Heaven, but many do carry licenses identifying them as members of nonexistent nations – a concept Watner does not approve of, as it suggests that people properly ought to carry identification in the first place.</p><p>“Whereas the Church says its members are not residents of the state, thus escaping its jurisdiction, the voluntaryist says that the state should have no jurisdiction over any one at all,” he wrote. “The state is a coercive institution, completely at odds with the moral laws that decry thievery, slavery and murder. Evil in any form should not be legitimized, so the voluntaryist refuses to grant validity to the state’s claim of jurisdiction, even over residents.”</p><p>Still, he managed to find common ground with the “conscientious objectors” of the Embassy of Heaven: “Voluntaryists believe in challenging the state head-on, yet they and other conscientious objectors share a common philosophical insight with the members of the church: might does not make right. The state rests on might: therefore it should be rejected.”</p><p>The Embassy of Heaven, therefore, “will then receive our praise for living by the voluntary principle, even if we do not choose to personally endorse it by becoming a member.”</p><p>Today, Casey, Stansberry, and other like-minded ideologues continue Watner’s tradition of conceding overlaps between themselves and Patriots, even as clear disparities exists. The two ideologies do appeal to much the same audience – and sometimes, their representatives share the same stage.</p><p>At 2012’s “FreedomFest,” for instance, Casey was listed as a keynote speaker together with a plethora of Patriot bigwigs, including Judge Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News personality and <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2010/11/24/fox-host-napolitano-is-a-9-11-truther-it-couldn/173763">9-11 “truther”</a> who thinks the government was behind the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and G. Edward Griffin, co-author of a popular Fed-bashing tome called <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/midwifing-the-militias">The Creature from Jekyll Island</a>. FreedomFest was organized by <a href="http://www.salon.com/2009/09/16/beck_skousen/">Mark Skousen</a>, a friend of <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/summer/meet-the-patriots/the-enablers">Patriot ringmaster</a> <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/11/27/in-new-novel-glenn-beck-warns-of-squirrel-worshipping-socialists/">Glenn Beck</a> and nephew of the late <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2011/spring/fringe-mormon-group-makes-myths-with-glenn-becks-help">W. Cleon Skousen</a>, a hugely influential figure in Patriot conspiracist circles.</p><p>And at “Libertopia 2012,” Casey was a listed speaker along with Larken Rose, a blogger who made news in 2011 with an post titled, “When Should You Shoot a Cop?” which proposed that it is acceptable to kill law enforcement officers if you perceive them to be violating your constitutional rights. Also featured at Libertopia was Ryan William Nohea Garcia, an “ambassador” for the ultra-libertarian <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/summer/the-old-man-and-the-sea">SeaSteading Institute</a>, which envisions building custom floating countries in international waters.</p><p>Stansberry also has shared platforms with Patriot nabobs. For years, he was a financial columnist for <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/fall/world-nuts-daily">WorldNetDaily</a>, a Patriot-leaning online publication with a theocratic bent that specializes in antigovernment conspiracy theories, end-times prophecy and revisionist histories of the Civil War. And this November, he appeared on the “Alex Jones Show” to promote his prediction about Obama’s supposed secret plan to run for a third term. The same episode featured commentary from <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/summer/meet-the-patriots?page=0,3">Edwin Vieira</a>, a Patriot grandee and militia supporter who in 2005 called for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, saying that the conservative jurist’s opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute “upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law.” Also appearing was <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2009/12/14/lew-rockwell-website-warns-of-coming-us-civil-war/">Lew Rockwell</a>, a libertarian commentator and blogger with a long history of promoting neo-secessionism and other extreme-right ideologies.</p><p>The Patriot movement is noteworthy for its followers’ forceful assertion of the right to bear arms, and form private militias willing to face down tyrannical government forces when the time comes. In contrast, Casey, Stansberry, and their sympathizers make a lot of noise about opposing violence, stressing the need to bring about their desired revolution through education and activism.</p><p>But in a 2011 essay titled “The Corruption of America,” Stansberry began to sing a very different tune. “The nation will soon face a choice between heading down the path toward fascism … or turning back the power of government and restoring the limited Republic that was our birthright,” he wrote. “What gives me confidence for the future? Gun sales, for one thing. U.S. citizens legally own around 270 million firearms – around 88 guns per 100 citizens (including children) today. That’s a hard population to police without its consent.”</p><p>Sounding very much like his Patriot cousins-in-arms — and very little like a proponent of nonviolent resistance — he continued: “[I]f the government attempts to take our guns … my opinion would change immediately. … But that’s one right the Supreme Court has been strengthening recently.”</p><p>“It gives me hope,” Stansberry said, “that most people in America still understand that the right to bear arms has little to do with protecting ourselves from crime and everything to do with protecting ourselves from government.”</p></div><p> </p> Tue, 18 Dec 2012 07:12:00 -0800Leah Nelson, Southern Poverty Law Center762994 at https://www.alternet.orgEconomylibertariananarcho-capitalistEver Wonder Where the Extreme Right's Conspiracy Theories and Paranoid Rumors Get Started? Meet WorldNetDailyhttps://www.alternet.org/media/ever-wonder-where-extreme-rights-conspiracy-theories-and-paranoid-rumors-get-started-meet
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">&quot;News company&quot; WorldNetDaily has pumped out staggering volumes of froth and nonsense, which then spreads to the rest of the Right&#039;s media echo chamber.</div></div></div><!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--> <p>WorldNetDaily (WND) describes itself as “an independent news company dedicated to uncompromising journalism, seeking truth and justice and revitalizing the role of the free press as a guardian of liberty.” The online newspaper, which this year celebrated its 15th year in operation, is one of the “very few sources” martial artist and action film hero Chuck Norris (who happens to be a columnist) trusts for news and an operation that megachurch pastor Greg Laurie (also a columnist) says does “a service to God and Country.”</p><p>WND is the brainchild of Joseph Farah, a self-described “radical” and longtime antigovernment propagandist and apologist for the Confederacy who believes “cultural Marxists” are plotting “to transform our political system, to change the way we think, to attack our values, to demean our faith in God, to reduce that shining city on the hill to the status of a drab public-housing project.”</p><p>Together with a coterie of antigovernment “Patriots,” anti-gay activists, white nationalists, Muslim-bashers, conspiracy theorists, end-times prophets and ultraconservative hardliners, Farah — who did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this article — has built WND into a modest media empire including a book imprint, an online subscription-only “intelligence resource,” and a glossy, full-color monthly magazine. At press time, Alexa, which ranks websites, said WND was the 1,832nd most popular website in the world and the 423rd in the U.S. — just above the site for Nickelodeon and a few notches below Victoria’s Secret.</p><p>WND’s point of view is best described as a cross between the now-defunct supermarket tabloid<em>Weekly World News</em>, which was famous for reporting on Elvis sightings, and The New American, a monthly magazine published by the far-right, conspiracist John Birch Society. In its 15 years online, it has introduced readers to a smorgasbord of bizarre ideas, specializing in anti-gay, anti-Muslim, and anti-liberal propaganda; antigovernment conspiracy theories; and end-times prophecy.</p><p>It featured a six-part series claiming (falsely) that soybean consumption causes homosexuality and promoted Scott Lively’s vile opus The Pink Swastika, which says that gays were behind the Holocaust. It has identified the first “leftist” as Satan, and declared that Muslims have a “20-point plan for conquering the United States by 2020.” It has warned of secret plans to create a North American Union, advised readers to invest all their assets in gold, and promoted myriad, if conflicting, theories about when and how the world will end.</p><p>Its most enduring claim, by far, is that President Obama is constitutionally ineligible to serve as president because he supposedly is not a “natural-born” U.S. citizen.</p><p>WND’s stable of writers includes “birther” conspiracist Jerome Corsi; Bob Unruh, a former Associated Press reporter who once sued his fifth-grade daughter’s school after it forbade her to distribute promotional materials for his wife’s “vacation bible school”; black neo-secessionist Walter E. Williams, who in a 2002 WND column wrote that the Civil War was an unconstitutional exercise of “federal abuse and usurpation;” and a panoply of other far-right and ultraconservative voices.</p><p>The online paper is also a launching pad for a new generation of extremists. Kevin DeAnna, founder of the white nationalist student group Youth for Western Civilization, was recently hired as marketing coordinator. DeAnna, 29, also has written articles for WND — including one that asserted that Earth Day falls on April 22 in order to honor Lenin’s birthday. Another young pundit who benefits from WND’s patronage is Jason “Molotov” Mitchell, 33, a self-declared “Christian Supremacist” who wants his co-religionists to reject “effeminized American Christianity” and start “advancing the Kingdom on earth.”</p><p>Farah shares those sentiments. “I don’t think the Scriptures teach us to passively wait for God to take care of the world. We are taught to occupy until he comes,” he wrote in his 2003 book, Taking America Back. “Don’t you think He wants us to reestablish the promises of America — one nation under God born of a creed?”</p><p>Despite — or perhaps because of — all this, WND has had unnerving success at injecting its agenda into the public sphere. Especially since the election of America’s first black president sent the far right into paroxysms of anxiety, this far-right supermarket tabloid of the Internet has become a force to be reckoned with.</p><p><strong>From Left to Right</strong></p><p>Joseph Francis Farah, 57, of Centreville, Va., is a former liberal activist who as a high school student in 1971 was arrested at a massive Washington, D.C., May Day anti-war demonstration, voted for George McGovern and Jimmy Carter (twice), and says he once volunteered to serve as a bodyguard for anti-war activist Jane Fonda. In the 1980s, while working his way up the journalism food chain to become editor of the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner, he became a devoted fan of Ronald Reagan, to whom his 2007 book, Stop the Presses, is dedicated.</p><p>He also found God and cultivated what he describes as a “Christian worldview.” He claims that becoming a journalist was his response to the question, “What would Jesus do?” and says that his chief influences are Watergate muckrakers Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein; Matt Drudge of “The Drudge Report”; Ronald Reagan; and a book called Marx &amp; Satan, which improbably claims that the author of <em>The Communist Manifesto</em> belonged to a Satanic cult.</p><p>Farah became the subject of national headlines in 1990, when he was hired as executive editor of California’s conservative Sacramento Union, whose new owners hoped that fresh blood would help turn the struggling 139-year-old paper around. Instead, during Farah’s 15 months at its helm, the Union’s circulation dropped by more that 25% as he dragged it sharply to the right.</p><p>Under his direction, pro-choice advocates were described as “pro-abortion” and environmentalists were reportedly called “eco-fruities.” The word “gay” was reportedly forbidden, replaced by “homosexual” — and once, in a column by the late David Chilton (who elsewhere wrote that “The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under … the rule of God’s law.”), with “sodomite.” Farah also convinced rising conservative radio star Rush Limbaugh (who had left Sacramento a few years earlier to take his show national) to write a daily column, and ran it on the paper’s front page.</p><p>Journalist Daniel Carson described the Union as “a mouthpiece for the fundamentalist Christian right, preoccupied with abortion, homosexuals and creationism.”</p><p>“[E]ach day seems to bring a bizarre new episode,” he wrote in 1990. “Farah altered a news story to call the National Organization for Women a ‘radical feminist group.’ A front-page story speculated about whether the confrontation in the Persian Gulf is the political beginning of Armageddon.”</p><p>Editors, managers and writers reportedly left in droves. “The feeling is it’s not really an objective newspaper anymore,” a former Union reporter told The Washington Post in 1990. “We didn’t go into journalism to work for some slanted publication.”</p><p>In October 1991, Farah resigned. Twenty-seven months later, the Union — which was at the time the oldest daily paper west of the Mississippi — closed its doors for good.</p><p>But Farah kept on writing. That same year, he founded the Western Center for Journalism (WCJ), a non-profit whose purpose was “to encourage more philosophical diversity in the news media.” In 1994, WCJ was hit with a $2 million libel suit for promoting a “report” suggesting that White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster had been the victim of foul play, rather than suicide. (The suit was later dismissed.) Farah also contributed occasional op-eds to respectable outlets like the Los Angeles Times, and ran a series of “watchdog” publications focused on liberal media and culture.</p><p>In May 1997, together with his wife, Elizabeth, Farah founded WorldNetDaily as a project of WCJ. In 1999, he used $4.5 million in seed money from unnamed investors and incorporated WND as an independent for-profit company. It quickly became one of the most popular “news” sites on the Web.</p><p><strong>Taking Sides</strong></p><p>Farah makes a lot of noise about WND’s independence from political and partisan causes. “I’ve been a newsman my whole adult life” and “I believe the proper role of a newsman is to seek the truth without fear or favor,” he wrote in Stop the Presses. “Unlike many of my colleagues in the press, I have avoided political parties, organizations, and associations that could compromise my integrity.”</p><p>As is so often the case, Farah’s version of reality is unique.</p><p>According to research compiled by the Institute for First Amendment Studies, as of 1998, Farah was a member of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a highly secretive group that lobbies for hardline conservative positions. At that time, CNP’s membership roster included many conservative heavyweights, among them Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, Jerry Falwell, Oliver North, Constitution Party co-founder Howard Phillips, and R.J. Rushdoony, father of Christian Reconstructionism. (Reconstructionism is an ultraconservative take on Christianity whose proponents seek to impose strict “biblical law” on the United States and have promoted the death penalty for “practicing homosexuals,” adulterers, and “incorrigible” children).</p><p>Farah has spoken at numerous political events. He gave the keynote address at a 2004 homeschooling conference run by a religious-right organization called the Alliance for Separation of School and State. He was scheduled to be a featured guest at a 2007 conference run by Vision Forum Ministries, an ultraconservative outfit whose director Doug Phillips is the son of Constitution Party co-founder Howard Phillips. In a 1997 book available on the Vision Forum website, the younger Phillips described Robert Lewis Dabney (a Confederate chaplain who called blacks a “sordid, alien taint” marked by “lying, theft, drunkenness, laziness, waste”) as “a man of extraordinary principle whose character remained unblemished throughout a long and distinguished career.”</p><p>In 2010, Farah boycotted the Conservative Political Action Conference, the right’s most important annual shindig, because it included an LGBT Republican group. He held his own conservative conference instead. Its lineup was a “Who’s Who” of far-right luminaries including U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.), former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Victoria Jackson, former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), anti-gay hate group leader and Christian Reconstructionist theologian Gary DeMar, and R.C. Sproul Jr., a mover-and-shaker in the theocratic Christian “patriarchy” movement and a prominent advocate of homeschooling.</p><p>WND’s board members — who in addition to Farah and his wife Elizabeth include Wayne Johnson, Norman Book, James Clark, and Richard Botkin — are also politically involved.</p><p>Johnson, who has been on WND’s board since 1999, is a Sacramento political consultant whose firm, according to TheRawStory, coordinated the campaign for California’s Proposition 8, which sought to outlaw same-sex marriage in that state. Until June 2002, he was a board member of the Chalcedon Foundation, a Christian Reconstructionist outfit and anti-gay hate group.</p><p>Book, who joined the board in 2008, is WND’s executive vice president of finance and technology. As an undergraduate at Stanford University, he co-founded The Stanford Review, which according to his LinkedIn profile was a conservative student weekly meant to “add balance to Stanford’s stifling liberal atmosphere.”</p><p>Clark, a board member since 1999, was difficult to track down. Based on the address he listed on WND’s tax form, he appears to be a recently departed lobbyist for the American Bankers Association (ABA). According to his LinkedIn profile, he served as ABA liaison to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a controversial and highly secretive group of far-right state legislators and business lobbyists that writes and pushes model bills. One of them was the pro-gun “Stand Your Ground” law that authorities cited as their reason for not immediately recommending charges against George Zimmerman, the Florida man who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in February.</p><p>Least noteworthy is Botkin, a Sacramento-area financial advisor and former Marine who has been on the board since 1999 and is an occasional contributor to conservative candidates. According to ConWebWatch, he worked with Farah in 2004 during a short-lived effort to revive the Sacramento Union as a magazine. His book about the Vietnam War was published by WND.</p><p>From 2000 to 2002, the board also included Robert Beale, an MIT grad who made his money in computers, served as the Minnesota campaign manager for televangelist Pat Robertson’s 1988 presidential bid, and eventually came to sympathize with the radical antigovernment “sovereign citizens” movement. In 2008, Beale was convicted of tax evasion, conspiracy, and fleeing authorites, charges he attempted to evade first by hiding from the law and then by conspiring to intimidate the judge — who, he said, God had commanded him to “destroy” — by filing fraudulent liens and issuing fake “arrest warrants” against her.</p><p><strong>God, Guns and Armageddon</strong></p><p>Like most well-trafficked websites, WND makes money through selling ad space and sending E-mails tempting subscribers with “special offers” from third parties.</p><p>In a May 2012 E-mail “from the desk of Joseph Farah,” the WND editor personally endorsed an offer from “the Millionaire Patriot” who was, he said, giving away “lifetime gun training memberships” to the first 500 subscribers to respond to his offer. The Millionaire Patriot is Ignatious Piazza, owner of Nevada’s Front Sight Firearms Training Institute and an accused con man. In 2007, Piazza settled for $8 million dollars a class action lawsuit brought by previous subscribers to his membership scheme. The plaintiffs alleged that he was running a Ponzi scheme, had misrepresented the value of memberships, and had diverted money “for his own personal use and benefit, including his Hollywood career.”</p><p>None of this was mentioned in WND’s E-mail to subscribers. Instead, Farah wrote that he “can personally vouch for Dr. Piazza and his Front Sight Training Institute” and urged readers “to prepare for what may be coming in the next four years! NOW is the time to get armed and trained.”</p><p>In 2010, subscribers received an E-mail hawking a book titled How to Survive the Collapse of Civilization, which warned that terrorists might attack the U.S. power grid with an electromagnetic pulse device that “could throw America into the dark ages in a split second.” The next year, a message titled “Gun Control Imminent — Stock Up Now!” warned that the president was “secretly conspiring to strip American Citizens of the right to bear arms” and promised “Burnin Hot Deals” from USA Ammo (motto: “Ammunition with Attitude”).</p><p>And, in 2011, WND shilled for a publication titled “The Antichrist Identity” that claimed President Obama is a crypto-Communist “apostle” of the “New World Order” who is setting up the planet for a takeover by “Jewish Masonic” elites who will reduce the population by 5.5 billion and “enslave all of mankind under the thumb of a Jewish master race led by a world messiah of Jewish ancestry who is to rule from Jerusalem.”</p><p>That “The Antichrist Identity” also scoffed at the idea that Obama was not born in the United States — a conspiracy WND has been tirelessly pushing for years — apparently did not bother the marketing team that approved the promotional E-mail.</p><p>Truth (or even internally consistent conspiracy theories) is not WND’s strong suit. But then, objectivity and consistency are not Farah’s goals. As he spelled out quite explicitly in <em>Taking America Back</em>, what he really wants is to foment a “revolution” — ideally, bloodless — that would eradicate most of the federal government, push LGBT people back into the closet and prayer back into the classroom, and “return” America to its supposed roots in biblical law.</p><p>The federal government, Farah wrote in Taking America Back, has “no lawful power outside its limited jurisdiction” and can only “impose its will on local communities and in the various states … through force of arms.” If Washington won’t “yield the power it has usurped from the states and from sovereign, self-governing individuals like you and me,” then “[i]t’s time to reconsider the idea of secession.”</p><p>The Civil War was really a “second war of independence” — and, “the motivations of many in the Confederacy were … a desire to live up to the promises of the U.S. Constitution, to test the principle of a voluntary union, to promote self-government and the rights of states.”</p><p>Farah’s own formula for revolution is simple: Turn on, tune in, and drop out. “Find a good reliable source of news — like WorldNetDaily.com — and be informed.” Buy guns — “more than you think you need.” (He notes these are for self-defense and to “preserve freedom.”) And above all, withdraw your children from “government schools,” those “indoctrination centers” and “brainwashing hubs” run by “statists who seek to steal our children and make a mockery of the family.”</p><p>“There is no neutral ground in the spiritual warfare consuming this universe,” he advises readers in the final sentences of Taking America Back. “Now stand up and join me in taking America back.”</p><p> </p> Wed, 10 Oct 2012 09:36:00 -0700Leah Nelson, SPLC Intelligence Report724782 at https://www.alternet.orgMediaMediaThe Right Wingworld net dailyconspiracy theoryMeet "Film Consultant" Steve Klein, Christian Hate-Group Leader Who Set Out to Spark Muslim Violencehttps://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/meet-film-consultant-steve-klein-christian-hate-group-leader-who-set-out-spark
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Klein told the Associated Press that he anticipated the release of his anti-Islam hate film would lead to violence. “We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen,” he said.</div></div></div><!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>Steve Klein, leader of a California hate group, says that Islam is a “penis-driven religion” whose followers have “no choice but to hunt Jews and Christians down, torture us and murder us.”</p><p>Klein, of Hemet, Calif., who has a long history of ties to militant Christian organizations, has been identified as one of the brains behind "The Innocence of Muslims," the anti-Muslim film that <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/news-agencies-us-ambassador-to-libya-killed-in-attack-outside-consulate/2012/09/12/665de5fc-fcc4-11e1-a31e-804fccb658f9_story.html">triggered violence in northern Africa</a>, and that has been credited as the impetus for a rocket attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the murder of Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya.</p><p>Much like Terry Jones, the Florida pastor whose much-hyped Koran burning <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/04/01/enraged-by-florida-pastor-afghan-crowds-kill-foreigners/">sparked mob riots</a> that led to at least a dozen deaths in Afghanistan last spring, Klein is an anti-Muslim ideologue who knew exactly the risks he was taking.</p><p>A longtime religious-right activist who brags about having led a “hunter killer” team as a Marine in Vietnam, Klein believes that America is already at war with Islam.</p><p>“We are a country at war and the enemy is among us,” he wrote on his Facebook page in 2011. “I don’t care what Janet Napolitano says, it’s a fight to the death and we should be prepared as possible. There are a certain number (probably a large number) of Muslims among us who are awaiting the trigger date and will begin randomly killing as many of us as they can, sort of a Fort Hood on steroids. I know I’m getting prepared to shoot back.”</p><p>Muslims, he wrote, “are a cancer that WILL attack us and KILL as many as they can to further the Islamic doctrine of Sharia law. They behead, cut off limbs, stone people to death and worse. Beware, there IS a holy war coming. The signs are everywhere if you care to look and listen.”</p><p>Klein has been waging his own holy war since 1977, when he founded Courageous Christians United, a group that conducts “respectful confrontations” outside of abortion clinics, Mormon temples and mosques.</p><p>In 2004, CCU’s anti-abortion efforts earned Klein the acclaim of the late Robert Ferguson, an anti-abortion extremist whose vocal support for the murderers of physicians, reproductive clinic workers, secretaries and escorts led the <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/1998/summer/anti-abortion-violence">radical, pro-violence “Army of God” website</a> to dub him a “Hero of the Faith.”</p><p>Klein now heads Concerned Citizens for the First Amendment, which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The group recently partnered with the ironically named Christian Anti-Defamation Commission to leaflet California high schools with material depicting the prophet Mohammad as a sex-crazed pedophile.</p><p>When he’s not busy spreading fear and hate among America’s youth, Klein conducts outreach and encourages militancy among Christians from the Middle East and northern Africa.</p><p>He runs drills with the Christian Guardians, a San Francisco-based group headed by Andrew Saqib James, an American-born Pakistani Christian who calls Islam “a giant crime syndicate” and hopes his group will become “the most feared militia in the world.” The trainings, which allegedly take place at the <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/spring/onward-christian-soldiers">Church at Kaweah’s</a> sprawling central California compound, are described as a “unique system of learning how to survive the Muslim Brotherhood as we teach the Christian Morality of Biblical Warfare.”</p><p>Klein has also traveled to other states to urge religious-right activists to take a harder line against the supposed threats of Islam, abortion and liberalism. In March 2011, he met with militant pastors in Missouri and asked that they let military veterans in their congregations “do our job.”</p><p>Discussing the visit on the radical Christian-right Dutch Joens Show, Klein said, “I bellowed at the audience, ‘Pastors, why do we have to act like women? Why do we have to be castrated? … You have the jurisdiction to preach, but … us guys that have been in the military, we have the authority from God on high to protect you? Why won’t you let us do our job?”</p><p>Klein seems to want violence to break out – in America. Later, he bragged to Joens about how his anti-Muslim leafleting campaign had led to fights at a California high school.</p><p>“If the kids are willing to fight, that’s because they realize how dangerous Islam is,” he said. Referencing violence that broke about between abolitionists and pro-slavery forces in the decade before the Civil War, he continued, “I can see it … kind of like Bleeding Kansas. … It’s gonna heat up big time.”</p><p>On Wednesday, Klein told the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/12/sam-bacile-in-hiding_n_1876044.html">Associated Press</a> that he anticipated the film’s release would lead to violence. “We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen,” he said.</p><p>Later, speaking with the U.K.’s Daily Mail online, Klein <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2202080/Innocence-Muslims-creator-Steve-Klein-said-felt-guilt-death-Chris-Stevens.html?ito=feeds-newsxml">said</a> that he regrets the ambassador’s death, “but it’s not our fault. We didn’t want anybody to get killed but on the other hand the truth had to come out. … We told the truth and these people reacted the way that Mohammed wanted to them to react – by killing people.”</p><p>He continued, “Do I feel guilt? Yes, but not for me, I feel it for those that did this. Do I feel shame? Yes, but not for me. Killing this man fits in with their legal and ethical standpoint.”</p> Wed, 12 Sep 2012 19:00:00 -0700Leah Nelson, Southern Poverty Law Center709437 at https://www.alternet.orgThe Right WingInvestigationsNews & PoliticsThe Right WingSteve KleinlibyaInnocence of Muslimsreligious rightThe Craziest Conservative Conspiracy Theories About Hurricane Isaachttps://www.alternet.org/craziest-conservative-conspiracy-theories-about-hurricane-isaac
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">The fabulists on the right are eager to blame Obama, one way or another. </div></div></div><!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--> <p> </p><p>Hurricane Isaac has inconvenienced a lot of people.</p><p>Many thousands of Gulf Coast residents have boarded up windows and sought shelter inland. And many others are now facing the prospect of cleaning up and rebuilding flooded homes and businesses.</p><p>But the inconvenienced people we’ve been hearing about most are the pundits and politicians who gathered in Tampa this week for the Republican National Convention.</p><p>If you’re been paying much attention to the fairy tales of the far right in the past few years, it should come as no surprise that not everyone thinks it was merely a coincidence that the swirling mass of rain and wind known as Isaac appeared on the radar screen just in time to disrupt the GOP’s nominating party and the news coverage of it.</p><p>Rush Limbaugh says Obama may have had something to do with it.</p><p>The fabulists at Joseph Farah’s extreme-right <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/fall/world-nuts-daily">WorldNetDaily</a>(WND) think it was the wrath of God.</p><p>And a clutch of Web-based antigovernment paranoiacs are sure that “chemtrails” and “chembombs” affected the storm’s path.</p><p>Let’s start with Limbaugh. On Monday, the conservative radio host told his audience that the government’s weather scientists had colluded to mess with the GOP’s carefully choreographed show.</p><p>After assuring listeners that he was <em>not</em> alleging a conspiracy, Limbaugh <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/08/27/tracking_the_hurricane_with_the_media">said</a>, “The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department. It’s the government. It’s Obama.”</p><p>Not that Obama is controlling the storm per se – that’s a theory best left to the chemtrails crowd. But Limbaugh is sure that<em>something</em> funky is going on. The storm “was being reported [on Sunday] in a way that resulted in the Republicans canceling their convention [Monday] when it’s nowhere near there. And that there were model runs Saturday night that showed Tampa was not gonna be hit at all, massive shift of models that was not reflected by the hurricane center for 12 hours.”</p><p> </p><p>While most reasonable observers understand that storm track predictions are imperfect and that hurricanes can, and frequently do, change course, Limbaugh apparently believes the administration intentionally withheld potentially life-saving information for the purpose of fouling up the Tampa convention. Then, he pivoted and whined that the weather service had shifted its prediction and, rightly, predicted landfall in New Orleans.</p><p>“Again, I’m alleging no conspiracy,” Limbaugh said. “I don’t want anybody thinking I’m going somewhere with this. I’m just telling you what happened.”</p><p>“[T]hey’re gonna turn this into Katrina and they’re gonna scare the hell out of New Orleans and they’re gonna revive, ‘Bush doesn’t care about people’ and revive all of it. They’re gonna politicize everything ‘cause they do it. And now they had the model runs allowing them to do it.”</p><p>OK then.</p><p>Shifting our view to the mad propheteers at WorldNetDaily, we find that William Koenig, a “Bible prophecy expert,” believes the source of the storm is divine retribution. According to Koenig, Obama’s Middle East policy and GOP “platform committee decisions to support further division of the land of Israel to pave the way for the creation of a Palestinian state” have angered God, who sent the hurricane as punishment.</p><p>“What does this have to do with Bible prophecy?” WND asked in an article published Sunday. “It goes back to Genesis and God’s pledge to bless those who bless the children of Israel and curse those who curse them. It’s a prophecy that many Christians and Jews believe is behind the fall of all the world’s empires of the past. That is a prophecy that has seen every empire of the world come and go – yet Israel remains.”</p><p>WND and Limbaugh haven’t cornered the market on Isaac-related unhingedness. In another corner of the Internet, a coterie of conspiracists who peddle vague theories about malevolent plans to geoengineer the planet are saying that “chemtrails” and “chembombs” were deployed to change the storm’s course.</p><p>For those not familiar, the <a href="http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/what-are-chemtrails.htm">“chemtrails” conspiracy theory</a> posits that the government uses contrails (the puffy strands of exhaust that trail behind jets) as a cover for releasing dangerous substances into the atmosphere.</p><p>According to a widely republished article that originated on a website called Chemtrails Planet, Isaac’s path was affected by “huge aerosols over the storm in conjunction with aerosols that had been deployed in advance of the arrival of the storm.” Chemtrails Planet goes on to suggest the perpetrator was Evergreen International Aviation, a private company <a href="http://www.air-america.org/Articles/Doole.shtml">with reported connections to the CIA</a>.</p><p>Chemtrails Planet doesn’t bother to explain <em>why</em> the government would want to affect a hurricane’s course – but influential conspiracy theorist <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/alex-jones">Alex Jones</a> had one idea.</p><p>“We would be weird to <em>not</em> say it could be government-created as some type of disaster for the election,” Jones said in a video uploaded to YouTube Tuesday. “That’s not outside the realm of possibility.”</p><p>Yes, that would <em>totally</em> weird. To not say it.</p><p> </p><p> </p> Thu, 30 Aug 2012 12:48:00 -0700Leah Nelson, Southern Poverty Law Center702163 at https://www.alternet.orghurricaneright wingAlabama Defeats Communism with Anti-Sustainability Lawhttps://www.alternet.org/story/155972/alabama_defeats_communism_with_anti-sustainability_law
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Thanks to the John Birch Society, &quot;environmentalism&quot; is no longer an issue in Alabama -- by state law. Who knew fixing it all would be that easy?</div></div></div><!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
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<div id="post-9251"> <div class="main"> <p style="line-height: 1.4; "> With chronic budget shortfalls, dangerously <a href="http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20120604/NEWS02/306040005/Overcrowding-budget-cuts-blamed-rise-prison-violence-?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFrontpage%7Cs" style="color: rgb(237, 34, 36); font-size: 1em; text-decoration: none; ">overcrowded prisons</a> and the nation’s <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-11-09/alabama-s-jefferson-county-files-for-u-s-s-biggest-municipal-bankruptcy.html" style="color: rgb(237, 34, 36); font-size: 1em; text-decoration: none; ">biggest municipal bankruptcy filing</a>, we here in Alabama have a lot on our minds.</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> But at least we can cross one worry off the list: Our property cannot be confiscated by the United Nations or any of its myriad stealth agents in the name of “sustainability,” “smart growth” or “environmentalism.”</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> For that, we can thank our hard-working state legislators, who in mid-May voted unanimously – yes, they did – in favor of a bill barring the enactment of any policy recommendations traceable to the U.N.’s <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/spring/behind-the-green-mask" style="color: rgb(237, 34, 36); font-size: 1em; text-decoration: none; ">Agenda 21</a> that infringe on property rights, at least without “due process.”</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> That’s right. Thanks to the legislation sponsored by GOP state Sen. Gerald Dial, Alabama farmers who have been <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j8R3NIiRGlSBSqk4MkXD0RJyDzEQ" style="color: rgb(237, 34, 36); font-size: 1em; text-decoration: none; ">planting less produce</a> this spring due to labor shortages caused by the state’s <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/alabama-s-anti-immigrant-law-a-cautionary-tale-for-other-states" style="color: rgb(237, 34, 36); font-size: 1em; text-decoration: none; ">draconian anti-immigration law</a> (the latest version of which includes a “scarlet letter” provision requiring the state “to post a quarterly list of the names of any undocumented alien who appears in court for a violation of state law, regardless of whether they were convicted”) can feel confident their fallow fields won’t be taken over by agents of the “New World Order.” Families can enjoy the benefits of the newly <a href="http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20120511/NEWS/120511001/Alabama-lawmakers-override-veto-school-start-bill" style="color: rgb(237, 34, 36); font-size: 1em; text-decoration: none; ">shortened school year</a> (enacted this spring over a gubernatorial veto by state legislators who claimed longer summer breaks will encourage tourism and generate revenue), secure in the knowledge that they will not return from their vacations to discover their property has been seized by blue-helmeted troops.</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> And while banks will still be allowed to foreclose on and evict folks for failing to repay their loans, at least our land will be safe from the clutches of the so-called “environmentalists” whose true goal is to deliver Americans into the hands of a global government run by shadowy, unelected elites who will move us around like chess pieces and control every aspect of our lives.</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> In reality, Agenda 21 is a non-binding, completely voluntary plan for global sustainability signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992 after the U.N.’s Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. But it’s seen by radical-right conspiracy theorists as a sort of Trojan horse for the New World Order.</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> As far as we know, there is zero evidence of anyone’s property in Alabama being taken away for any sort of sustainability effort or environmental initiative without due process.</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> The executive director of the Alabama Republican Party noted the passage of the so-called “Due Process for Property Rights Act” in a newsletter, stating that the law “is intended to shelter Alabamians from … a sustainable development initiative that some conservatives see as a precursor for the creation of a world government.”</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> Reached by phone, a spokesperson for Alabama GOP said she didn’t know enough about the bill to say if the party is worried about the creation of a world government or whether there is any evidence whatsoever that anyone is trying to move in that direction. Otherwise, it received practically no attention from the mainstream media.</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> The news didn’t slip through the cracks completely, however. On Monday, there appeared on the website of <em>The New American</em> a long article celebrating Alabama’s new law as a victory for “citizens who had been terrorized by Agenda 21-linked schemes targeting their private property.”</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> “[G]rassroots pressure paid off,” it said. “Alabama became the first state to be officially shielded by law from UN-linked anti-property rights scheming.”</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> <em>The New American</em> is published by the John Birch Society (JBS), a far-right organization best known for accusing President Dwight D. Eisenhower of being a secret communist and for opining that fluoridated water is a communist plot to poison America. For a short time in the early 1960s, it was an influential force in the Republican Party – until William F. Buckley Jr., the intellectual architect of postwar conservatism, <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/goldwater-the-john-birch-society-and-me/" style="color: rgb(237, 34, 36); font-size: 1em; text-decoration: none; ">led a campaign</a> to “excommunicate” it from conservative circles, warning Republicans against “acquies[ing] quietly” to the JBS’ “false” “rendition of the causes of the decline of the Republic and the entire Western world.”</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> Buckley died in 2008, and the JBS has been making a steady comeback since. With the Cold War over, it has gotten creative: These days, it frets about door-to-door gun confiscations, FEMA concentration camps and martial law. It claims the Federal Reserve is a massive conspiracy and warns of plans to create a “North American Union” that will subvert U.S. interests and destroy the Constitution.</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> Since September, the JBS has sponsored a <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/12/05/john-birch-society-agenda-21-is-stealth-plot-to-steal-freedom/" style="color: rgb(237, 34, 36); font-size: 1em; text-decoration: none; ">national lecture tour</a> on the supposed dangers of Agenda 21. Using slideshows replete with images of Karl Marx and Alger Hiss, the accused communist spy who helped draft the U.N. Charter, JBS scare-mongers have fanned out across the country to warn locals of the evils of the U.N.’s sustainability initiative. Agenda 21, they claim, calls for “a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced.” According to the JBS, the ultimate purpose of this decades-old plan is nothing less than a new world order in which rural regions will be depopulated and foreign bureaucrats will mandate family size here in the United States, imposing forced abortions as they do in communist China.</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> Apparently, these threats were enough to spook the Republican National Committee, which in January <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/summer/rnc-endorses-major-conspiracy-theory-" style="color: rgb(237, 34, 36); font-size: 1em; text-decoration: none; ">passed a resolution</a>opposing Agenda 21, decrying the nonbinding measure as “a comprehensive plan of extreme environmentalism, social engineering, and global political control.” Counties in various states have adopted similar resolutions, as has the <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/03/14/tennessee-house-falls-victim-to-agenda-21-conspiracy-theory/" style="color: rgb(237, 34, 36); font-size: 1em; text-decoration: none; ">Tennessee House of Representatives</a>. According to <em>The New American</em>, activists in New Hampshire are lobbying to pass anti-Agenda 21 legislation. Arizona’s state Senate this spring passed a bill similar to Alabama’s, but it died before the session ended.</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> Community sustainability efforts are coordinated through something known as <a href="http://www.iclei.org/index.php?id=1202" style="color: rgb(237, 34, 36); font-size: 1em; text-decoration: none; ">ICLEI – the International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives</a>. Under its auspices, more than 1,000 cities and municipalities around the world, including hundreds in the U.S., have received grants (or bribes, if you agree with the JBS version of the story) that will help implement local sustainability proposals.</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> News of the Alabama passage heartened anti-ICLEI activists across the nation. The headline on one Virginia blog, for example, reads: “VICTORY! ICLEI BAN PASSED ALABAMA LEGISLATURE! YEAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Read it and weep, globalists!”</p>
<p style="line-height: 1.4; "> The Alabama cities of Birmingham and Huntsville are both ICLEI members (though depending on how this law is interpreted, they may not be for long). As their residents gear up for another long, hot Deep South summer, they – and the rest of us Alabamians – can breathe a sigh of relief, safe in the knowledge that the communist menace of environmental protection has been beaten back from our doors.</p>
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<div class="field field-name-field-bio field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <!--smart_paging_autop_filter--> </div></div></div>Tue, 19 Jun 2012 07:00:01 -0700Leah Nelson, SPLC&#039;s Hate Watch671332 at https://www.alternet.orgVisionsVisionsEnvironmentCorporate Accountability and WorkPlaceThe Right Wingsustainabilityjohn birch societyagenda 21Jamaican Anti-Gay 'Murder Music' Heard by Millions in the UShttps://www.alternet.org/story/149380/jamaican_anti-gay_%27murder_music%27_heard_by_millions_in_the_us
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<div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">If your familiarity with Jamaican music begins and ends with Bob Marley, “murder music” and its worldwide popularity will come as a serious shock.</div></div></div><!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
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<!--smart_paging_autop_filter--><p>Jamaican dancehall star Buju Banton was considered a musical prodigy in 1988 when, at age 15, he recorded what remains one of his best-known tracks, “Boom Bye Bye.” Even in the difficult-to-decipher Jamaican slang known as patois, its chorus evokes violence and dread: Boom bye bye / inna batty bwoy head / Rude bwoy no promote no nasty man / dem haffi dead. (“Boom [the sound of a gunshot], bye-bye, in a faggot’s head / the tough young guys don’t accept fags; they have to die.”)</p>
<p>For those whose familiarity with Jamaican music begins and ends with Bob Marley, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/peter-tatchell-politicians-and-pop-stars-are-to-blame-1786275.html">“murder music”</a> — and its stubborn worldwide popularity — will come as a serious shock.</p>
<p>Gay and lesbian activists in Jamaica and throughout the Western world have spent years trying to slow the spread of murder music. The going is tough: Banton, a four-time Grammy nominee who has collaborated with renowned Haitian singer Wyclef Jean and the punk band Rancid, is but first among equals in a genre deeply rooted in Jamaican culture, whose stars include celebrated musicians like Beenie Man, Capleton and Sizzla Kalonji. The top-rated of 86 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=buju+banton+boom+bye+bye" target="_blank">YouTube videos of Banton performing “Boom Bye Bye”</a> has been viewed an astounding 3,217,409 times since it was posted in 2007.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Murder_Music">Stop Murder Music</a> campaign is an international movement with activists on nearly every continent who urge sponsors to pull funding from offending artists, pressure venues not to book them, and organize boycotts and protests when they perform. Supporters of the musicians “say we’re attacking these artists because they’re homophobic,” said British human rights activist Peter Tatchell, international coordinator of Stop Murder Music. “That’s not true. We’re attacking them because they’re inciting the criminal offenses of violence and murder.”</p>
<p>Something surely is. According to the Jamaica Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG), Jamaica’s only organization promoting LGBT rights, mobs assaulted at least 98 gay men and lesbians between February and July 2007 alone. Last year, J-FLAG recorded six cases of “corrective rape,” in which men forced themselves on women thought to be lesbians. More recently, in just the month of September, two women were subjected to corrective rape, J-FLAG said. The first was gang-raped by a group of four men; the second was held at knifepoint and raped after being forced to perform oral sex on her attacker.</p>
<p>The source of another oft-repeated statistic, that at least 35 Jamaicans have been killed since 1997 solely for being gay, is unknown; it is commonly but wrongly attributed to Amnesty International. In any case, powerful taboos against gays in Jamaica make compiling accurate statistics on anti-gay hate crimes difficult because victims and their families are afraid to come forward.</p>
<p><strong>Roots, Rock, Hate</strong><br />
Murder music may be a trigger for anti-gay violence, but Jamaica’s cultural homophobia has deep historical roots. The island’s fundamentalist brand of Christianity and its indigenous Rastafarian religion both condemn homosexuality in the strongest terms. Buju Banton, Beenie Man, Sizzla, Capleton and others in the murder-music pantheon espouse Rastafarian beliefs.</p>
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<p>Making matters worse, anti-sodomy laws criminalizing sex between men remain on the books in Jamaica and other former British colonies in the Caribbean. As a result, gay men are essentially viewed as criminals, making it nearly impossible for them to bring complaints about violence to the police. Though consensual sex between two women is not illegal, murder music nevertheless includes lesbians in its wrath.</p>
<p>Even politicians at times have conferred legitimacy on murder music. Dancehall group TOK’s track “Chi Chi Man,” about killing and burning gay men, was the Jamaican Labour Party’s 2001 theme song. Its lyrics: From dem a par inna chi chi man car / Blaze di fire mek we bun dem! From dem a drink inna chi chi man bar / Blaze di fire mek we dun dem! (“Those who gather in a fag’s car / Blaze the fire, let’s burn them! Those who drink in a fag bar / Blaze the fire, let’s kill them!”) The melody of the chorus, ironically, evokes the Christian hymn, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” The most viewed of 99 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tok+chi+chi+man" target="_blank">“Chi Chi Man” YouTube videos</a> had been seen 869,084 times as of mid-September.</p>
<p>In 2002, the People’s National Party took on the slogan “Log On to Progress” — a reference to the dancehall song “Log On” by Elephant Man (seen 473,400 times on its <a target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=elephant+man+log+on&amp;aq=f">most popular YouTube video</a>), which also features violent anti-gay lyrics: Log on, and step pon chi chi man / Log on from yu know seh yu nuh ickie man./ Log on and step pon chi chi man /Dance wi a dance and a bun out a freaky man. (“Log on, and stomp on a fag/ Log on, because you know you’re not a fag/Log on, and stomp on a fag/We dance and dance and burn up a fag”).</p>
<p>The anti-gay atmosphere in Jamaica is so pronounced that gay activists must operate underground and behind aliases. Located in Kingston — ground zero for murder music — J-FLAG provides up-to-date information on songs, artists and anti-gay violence and acts as a general resource for Jamaica’s LGBT community, assisting with housing, medical care, legal complaints, and other civil and human rights issues. But the 12-year-old organization’s work is still so risky that the exact location of its office is secret, as are the identities of its three employees. “Jason McFarlane,” the most publicly available staffer, won’t reveal his real name and never appears in public in association with J-FLAG. Even so, he said, a few friends have recognized his voice from radio interviews and expressed concern for his safety.</p>
<p>Their fear is well founded. In June 2004, J-FLAG co-founder Brian Williamson, one of the only openly gay public figures in Jamaica, was stabbed to death in his home. A Human Rights Watch worker who happened to be in the country reporting on HIV/AIDs was at the scene an hour later, watching in horror as a gleeful crowd gathered outside Williamson’s house. According to her report, the revelers laughed and called out “Let’s get them one at a time” and “That’s what you get for sin,” and also sang lines from “Boom Bye Bye.”</p>
<p>The man who replaced Williamson as J-FLAG’s leader and media representative was much more careful to protect his identity. But on Valentine’s Day 2007, he and two other men were forced to seek refuge in a pharmacy after being pursued by a violent crowd. The shopkeeper provided shelter until police came to rescue them. But after dropping the men off at their homes, the officers realized one of them was J-FLAG’s spokesman. They allegedly began harassing him and threatening him. Eventually, the man fled Jamaica and sought asylum in Canada.</p>
<p>Jamaica has an unusually high level of violent crime by any measure. A 1998-2000 United Nations survey placed Jamaica third among countries with the most murders per capita, exceeded only by Colombia and South Africa. In the same survey, Jamaica was 14th in assaults per capita.</p>
<p>“A lot of what’s developed in society is that there is an inability to negotiate conflict,” McFarlane said of Jamaican culture. “There is no space for disagreement. The only way to settle a dispute is violence. If somebody steps on your foot, you react with violence before you have time to realize it’s a mistake.”</p>
<p>In such an environment, it is easy to incite anti-gay violence through music. “Particularly in the lower socioeconomic classes, dancehall music is their life,” McFarlane said. Fans “see these guys are superstars and they are influenced by what they are saying.”</p>
<p><strong>Conciliation and Controversy</strong></p>
<p>Apart from Bounty Killer, all eight of the original murder music singers Stop Murder Music sought to embargo have now signed the Reggae Compassion Act, which says that signatories will not “make statements or perform songs” that incite hatred or violence. Beenie Man, Capleton and Sizzla became the first to sign, in 2007. Banton signed shortly thereafter, using his given name of Mark Anthony Myrie — though he later denied signing at all. Elephant Man, T.O.K. and Vybz Kartel signed more recently; according to Stop Murder Music, they are the only signatories not to have violated the agreement.</p>
<p>The Stop Murder Music campaign has had an effect on artists, especially in the United States and Europe, said McFarlane and Tatchell. Major sponsors have withdrawn, and boycotts and rallies have increased fans’ awareness of the issue. Dozens of performances and tours have been canceled, hitting artists where it hurts most: in their wallets. Also, as of April 2010, five artists known for murder music had had their U.S. visas revoked — though the Department of Justice refuses to say exactly why.</p>
<p>But when compassion closes a door, hate sometimes opens a window. McFarlane said the boycott’s international success has made life more difficult for the already-persecuted LGBT community in Jamaica. “What we have seen is an increase in threats against our GLBT community when international organizations and individuals call for boycotts,” he said. “In 2008 and 2009, we had a few clients report being threatened and even attacked because they were the people that want people to boycott Jamaica. In fact, our sentiment is that carrying out a boycott is not helpful because our community will also be threatened with the same risk of job loss coupled with the backlash locally.”</p>
<p>Moreover, murder music is welcomed in some African countries regardless of Western opprobrium.</p>
<p>“The King of Dancehall stuck a sword of words into gay people,” enthused Uganda’s <em>Daily Monitor</em> after Beenie Man’s December 2009 performance in Kampala. Uganda is perhaps the most virulently anti-gay country on the planet: In 2009, a member of parliament proposed to stiffen already harsh penalties for sodomy by adding the death penalty for homosexual “repeat offenders,” those who engage in same-sex acts with minors, and people with HIV/AIDS.</p>
<p>In February 2010, Sizzla Kalonji headlined the national celebration of Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe’s 86th birthday. Mugabe rewarded him with the deed to a Zimbabwean farm.</p>
<p>The impact of Jamaican murder music in the United States — including any violence it may have provoked — is impossible to measure. But its popularity is evident from the huge number of video downloads, and the music and its words can easily be found elsewhere on the Internet, as well.</p>
<p>In Jamaica itself, murder-music concerts and radio play are almost impossible to repress. Anti-gay performances are practically a compulsory part of dancehall musicians’ repertoire, McFarlane said. Increasingly aware that overt references to violent acts towards gays could damage their marketability abroad, artists walk the line by inventing new slang and making their lyrics more obscure.</p>
<p>McFarlane, who is gay, was doing volunteer work for J-FLAG when its previous leader was forced to leave. He said he “jumped at” the opportunity to become a full-time employee. Of the personal risks he takes by representing J-FLAG, he said, “It’s all relative, and most times I try not to think about it. Because the truth is, the work has to be done."</p> <!-- All divs have been put onto one line because of whitespace issues when rendered inline in browsers -->
<div class="field field-name-field-bio field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <!--smart_paging_autop_filter--> </div></div></div>Fri, 31 Dec 2010 10:00:01 -0800Leah Nelson, SPLC Intelligence Report664751 at https://www.alternet.orgHuman RightsHuman RightsCultureanti-gayjamaicadancehallbuju banton